With the rising costs of electricity production and the threat of carbon emission caused climate change, energy efficiency has long been a very important design consideration for the designers of any electronic product. Electric lighting has been improving efficiency by moving from inefficient traditional incandescent light bulbs to fluorescent lighting using compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs and light-emitting diode (LED) lighting systems.
In addition to the energy cost savings and the environmental benefits, increased electrical energy efficiency can improve the operating performance of electronic products. For example, by increasing the energy efficiency of any mobile electronic device such as a tablet computer or cellular telephone, the battery-powered operating time of such mobile electronics can be lengthened such that the mobile electronic device can be used for a longer time period between recharges. Thus, there are many reasons to improve the energy efficiency of electronic products.
Electronic circuits consume energy in multiple different manners. Energy is often consumed generating light, generating sound, transmitting a signal, or operating a motor on some type of output circuit. However, energy is also consumed in other unintentional manners. For example, the resistance of transmission conductors causes conductors to heat up thus causing transmission losses. Another type of unintentional loss is switching losses caused by transistors that switch between on and off states. It would therefore be desirable to reduce the unintentional switching losses within electronic circuits to improve energy efficiency.